Jake and I have been busy with many projects around the farm. However, we recently found some time to complete a Hugelkultur bed. A Hugelkultur, for those of you who are unfamiliar with one, are raised garden beds that are made of logs, stacked on top of each other, and then covered with dirt. You then plant into this dirt, and over time the logs break down releasing moisture and nutrients to your plants/trees. Depending on the wood you use, some Hugelkultur beds will last 20+ years. Here are a few pictures of our Hugelkultur bed.
Lessons learned? Well, we layered some hay between the layers of logs. We don’t know what will happen with this hay, but I’m sure it will break down quickly. However, we neglected to put any dirt in the air gaps between the logs. This might be a problem, but I can’t really say yet. I feel like the roots will need something to root into, but who knows! Another issue we ran into was the fact that we have CLAY soils here. I’m talking some serious clay. We gathered up a few loads of “dirt” and attempted to cover the logs with it. The clay just clumps together and rolls off the logs. We ended up forcing the clay into all of the nooks and crannies, in addition to a decent layer on top. After this was done, we covered the entire bed with a nice layer of hay. We know that we need more layers of dirt, not clay, over the entire bed for it to be effective. So, I will keep you all updated on that. I also have pictures of the completed bed, which are not show above, and I will add those sometime too. Been real busy around here so my posts are becoming less frequent. Sorry about that!
“The Encyclopedia of Country Living” by Carla Emery is a monster of a book, at 950 pages. In its 10th edition, this book is the go-to source for Homesteaders. Farmers/Ranchers could also learn a thing or two from this book. The amount of topics covered are incredible, and if your living in the country I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
You can purchase the book here: http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=NL4R1tBaTK4&subid=&offer…
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Greg Judy has written a wonderful book titled “No Risk Ranching: Custom Grazing on Leased Land”. It’s full of wonderful information on how to get started custom grazing on leased land. There is some risk, but not much! Today, I’d like to cover a few of the key points in the book. I would highly recommend you buy the book and read it before you go out and try this.
The whole idea behind the book is to gain experience grazing cattle, and use other people’s land and cattle to make a profit. The risk that is placed on you is low. Land is expensive. Cattle are expensive. Paying the up front costs of both of those items is expensive, however the hidden costs like taxes and supplemental feed can get you into trouble quickly if you are operating on debt.
Here are a few tips that Greg provides in the book:
Look for unused land to lease
Make sure you have good water. If you don’t, calculate the cost of building ponds/installing a water system vs the money you’ll make custom grazing and the cost of the land lease
Do all that you can to stay out of debt
Get a written land lease contract – this is key and he provides all of the details you’ll need to write one in the book
Have fun!
Greg has years of experience doing this. He still leases land today. It would benefit you to buy his book, and learn from his experiences, so you don’t make the same mistakes he did. I believe that those of us who learn from others experiences, and take their advice to heart will be the most successful in the future.
What manure is telling you about the condition of your cattle
Determine and implement an adequate recovery period for your grass
Today I’d like to talk about grazing cattle. Many of us find cattle intimidating because they are so big and powerful. While cattle do deserve our respect and attention, they can be managed easily when you keep things simple.
Good management starts with observation. Observing your cattle’s behavior and appearance can tell you a great deal about how they are performing. It’s easy to do, once you know what to look for. And, in order for your cattle to perform on grass, whether your goal is dairy or beef production, they need to be moved to new grass frequently. Why do your cattle need to move frequently? There are many reasons, but, as I promised earlier, I’m going to keep it simple. Simply put, your cattle need to be moved so they have fresh grass to eat. New grass plants have more energy in them. This energy is what enables the cow to produce high quality milk or the steer to fatten up for beef production. The energy I’m referring is located in the tips of the grass plants. As you work your way down the plant, toward the ground, the less energy there is, and the cellulose content rises. So, in order to maximize beef or milk production, it makes sense to maximize the amount of energy your cattle are getting. To give them the most energy, you need to control their grazing. To control their grazing, I highly recommend electrified polybraid (not polywire), fencing reels and step-in posts. These tools are so powerful and inexpensive that it makes a lot of sense to use them. With these tools and most importantly, your management decisions, you will create paddocks to limit the amount of grass they have access to. Normally, they will stay in a paddock for 24 hours. Sometimes, they might be in a paddock for 3 days, or 3 hours. These are extreme examples and I recommend to you that you start with 24 hour paddock moves.
Determining the size of paddocks for you cattle can be tricky if you are just starting out. Everyone’s farm is different, and we have extreme temperature variations in the United States. To simplify all of this, you can use two methods of observation to determine if your cattle are being limited (too little grass) or given too much grass. These two methods are:
Gut Fill
Observing Manure Quality and Texture
We can understand what is going on inside of a cow/steer by looking at their gut fill and manure. Let’s start with gut fill. This is such an easy way of judging if your cattle are performing that I just love it! Determining gut fill can be done when looking at the left side of the cow. What left side you ask? Imagine you are riding the cow like a horse (wouldn’t that be fun!), the left side is the side that your left leg would be hanging over. Look at this area (see picture below) to determine gut fill. If the cow has an indentation in this area, you have limited her. If this area is flush you have done a good job meeting her nutritional requirements. If you see an indentation, this is a red flag, and on the next paddock move, you need to give her access to more grass or you need to move her more frequently. You goal is to always, even in the winter, have the gut fill of all your cattle flush or slightly bulging. Proper gut fill not only enables the cow to produce high quality milk/beef, but ensures that you will not have any fertility or health problems down the road. If your cattle are limited for just five days, your chances of running into problems increase dramatically! Using the “gut fill technique” is an easy and effective way to determine if your cattle are getting proper nutrition. Try implementing this technique and you and your cattle will be happier.
Moving on to manure. This is where the fun really begins! After you have looked at the gut fill on your cattle, it’s time to observe their manure. A good manure pat should only be a few inches high, and have a nice pond in it. It shouldn’t be fibrous and tall. It also should not be runny. If the manure is too runny, the cow needs more roughage. This is common the spring. Lush spring grass if full of protein! Try putting out some dry hay for them. This will fix the problem. Wait 12-24 hours and reassess their manure. Now, to the other extreme. If their manure is piling up and fibrous it’s an indication of too much roughage. Your cattle need more energy. One way to remedy this is to move your cattle through the paddocks faster, thus giving them more plant tips, which contain more energy. It is common for your cattle to have cellulosic manure when you are feeding hay. One way to combat this is to give them stockpiled grass in the winter, along with hay. Not only will this enable them to have quality manure, but it will also significantly reduce your feed bill! During the wintertime and if you live in a climate where you have to feed hay, like the pacific northwest or the northern mid-west, it will be hard to avoid manure that is cellulosic. Don’t concern yourself too much with it, and apply this principle during the growing season. If you are made of money then you have the option of feeding haylage or silage to get their manure pats to the desired consistency during the dormant season. Just ensure that your cattle are getting enough to eat (gut fill). To recap, the manure should be a few inches high, have a nice pond in it, and be the consistency of pumpkin pie. Take your boot and smear a few manure pats to determine consistency. You can also use your finger if your a feeling particularly courageous.
Now we move on to recovery periods. This will vary greatly depending on where you live in the world. A simple rule of thumb is to wait until the plant has four leaves before you come back and graze it. Most of the time, this means that the plant is recovered enough to graze again. Many plants are different heights at maturity, so I like the four leaf rule.
With some keen observation and good management, it really is that simple. I hope you’ll take these ideas into consideration and add them to your management toolbox. I hope you enjoyed my post, and I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section.
If you are grazing cattle, no matter how many you have, it’s a good idea to provide them with minerals. How many different minerals should you feed? Well, that depends on a lot of things. How big is your herd? How much money do you feel comfortable spending on mineral a month? Are you in debt? What is the condition of your herd right now?
These are all important questions that you should answer before you implement a mineral feeding program. One thing before I go any further. Don’t start a mineral feeding program in the dormant season. Start it in the spring/early summer when your animals have access to fresh, green grass. If you start in the winter, the cattle will go crazy for all of their new minerals and bankrupt you!
Now that you have thought about those questions a little bit, I’d like to talk about building the mineral feeder itself. Let’s take a look at the picture below.
Here you can see the many different compartments for the different minerals. You can create one to suit your needs, with as many compartments as you need. I believe the mineral feeder here has 16 compartments. The sides are 2×12”. Then you can just cut slots in them to slide in your pieces of plywood. I wouldn’t recommend using treated plywood or wood, they have toxic substances in them that may sicken your livestock. The bottom the of feeder is made of plywood.
The bottom the feeder sits on two, 4×4 posts. These posts run the length of the feeder, and are covered by sheet metal. This makes it easier to pull around the pastures and does less damage to your ground. The metal also makes it nice when you are dragging your feeder across gravel roads. To be able to pull the mineral feeder, you need to attach two eyebolts to the 4x4s, one on each side, and then attach chains to the eyebolts. This will enable you to pull the feeder behind a 4-wheeler, truck or mule. One thing that isn’t pictured the is the top of the mineral feeder. For the top, it’s good to use old heavy duty conveyor belt that is about 1/2”. Make sure you overlap it on all sides of the feeder about 2 inches. You can just put three bolts into the middle of the feeder to hold covering in place. You’ll need to protect your minerals from the weather, or else you’ll be wasting your money! Here is a detail of the chains.
So there you have it. Building a mineral feeder, and assuring that your cattle have access to minerals is pretty easy. The mineral feeder can also be placed in locations that you want to get more animal impact.
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I recently wrote a post on determining if you cattle were being limited by the amount of forage you’ve given them. It was titled “Gut Fill and How to Tell if Your Cattle Are Performing” and you can find that post here, but I made a mistake, so read this post first and then that one. Well, turns out I was WAY off about something pretty important. Today, I’d like to correct myself and let you all know that I’ve made a mistake, and I intend to correct it.
If you want to properly determine the gut fill of cattle, you need to look here.
You actually want to look just ahead of the “hooks” on your cattle. This is where you will properly determine if you cattle are getting enough feed, or if you are limiting them. Again, let me remind you that this area, which is circled in red above, should never have a depression inward. An example would be if you could go set a bowl down inside of that area. If you can do that, you’ve severely limited your cattle, and you will have health and fertility problems.
In conclusion, make sure that this area is nice and full. It doesn’t have to be bulging outward, but it sure is nice when you see that!
I hope you aren’t too harsh on me, that was a stupid mistake I made, but everyone does it.
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Join me today for a book review of “The Unsettling of America” by Wendell Berry. This book has many profound philosophical observations and arguments. The book is worth reading even if you have no interest in agriculture, and if you do, well, it’s spectacular!
You can buy it HERE
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If you have sheep or goats, one of the best ways you can protect them is with a Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD). These dogs were bred to do just that, bond with the livestock and protect them. Today, I won’t go into the breeds of good LGDs, but I will address one of the most important aspects of keeping one on your land. Feeding them.
To feed a LGD can be a challenge. Sheep and goats would love some of that dog food that you’ve put out to feed your LGDs. However, sheep and goats are not as intelligent as dogs, so you can easily design something to work with those physiological traits. See the picture below.
First, when thinking about designing a feeder for your LGDs, I would recommend that you make it mobile. This feeder here that Greg built is on runners. It’s easy to tow around the pasture, and if you needed to, you could drag it a few miles on dirt roads, or load it into a pickup. Second, you want to allow the dogs in, but keep the sheep out. This is the approximately 12”-16” opening you see at the bottom. This allows the dogs to crawl up underneath, and get inside to access their food. Like I mentioned earlier, sheep and goats are too stupid to get into this. One thing that is not on this feeder, but I would recommend putting on one, is a secure roof. Just something like a cattle panel to prevent any critters (goats) from jumping inside and running your dog feed. This is basically all you need, and the tarp is no necessary either. We recently put on some LGD puppies out there, so we gave them some extra shelter. One thing you will notice is a gravity feed dog feeder in the back. This is filled with dry dog food and strapped with a bungee cord to the cattle panels. When you move your livestock, you can drag this right along with them.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section.
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Last week, I gave a brief introduction to what Permaculture is, and why you should care. You can find that post here. Today, I’d like to talk about one of the techniques that Permaculture has given us. That tool is called swales.
Swales are ditches that run on contour. Think of them as ditches that run perpendicular to the flow of water coming down a hill. The point of them is slow down and catch water, and then slowly release it. This also eliminates erosion problems, and allows you to grow things that you might not normally be able to grow.
We built some swales around our trailer, and the very next day we got 2 inches of rain. This was perfect timing! I’m happy to report that two days later, the swales are still holding water.
Here is one of our swales. The livestock guardian puppies seem to enjoy them as much as we do.
To create a swale you need to find a suitable spot. Then, you need to get an A-frame level in order to mark out your swale. You can find out how to build and use an A-frame level here.
Now that you’ve become familiar with an A-frame level, you can mark your swale. I like to use flags for this, but as you can see in the picture above, we used fiberglass rods. Once you have your swale marked out, you can grab a round headed shovel and get to work. I like to cut into the ground at a 45 degree angle when making a swale. Once you start removing dirt, you place all of it on the downhill side of the swale. Try to keep this pile of soil somewhat neat and orderly. You will be planting into this pile later.
After you have completed digging your swale, it’s a good idea to cover the pile of dirt that runs along the downhill side of the swale. I prefer hay to do this. Also you want to avoid putting too much hay in the actual swale, we don’t want to build too much organic matter in this area. Where we do want soil cover and organic matter is on the pile of dirt. Check out the picture below.
When you reach this point, most of the work is done! All you need to do now is plant into the downhill side of the swale. For the first year, I would recommend you plant a mixture of cover crops to keep the soil covered, and start building organic matter. Later down the road you can plant veggies, fruit and nut trees and shrubs. It’s a good idea to build organic matter and let the root systems of the cover crops hold things in place.
When you build a swale you will see the benefits of it immediately. It’s a nice feeling when you can see that you are holding onto the water that falls on your land, and you aren’t losing topsoil and moisture due to runoff. Try creating a swale and tell me what happens, I’d love to hear about it.
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Creating a farm road with geotextile will provide you with a long lasting road that is easy to maintain and cheaper than putting down concrete or asphalt.
When designing a road, you want to insure that you have adequate drainage. I like to see a hump in the middle of the road, so water can travel from the top of the road, off to the sides, and into a ditch. You can use the water in these ditches creatively, but that is a topic for another day.
You will need to either grade the road with a hump in the middle yourself, or hire someone to do it. After you road has been graded, you will be left with bare dirt. The next step many people take is putting down rock/gravel. This is a mistake.
The next step you should take would be to put down a layer of geotextile, and then your gravel/rock on top of that. What is geotextile? Geotextile is a permeable membrane, usually made of woven polyester or polypropylene. It allows water to seep through it, while preventing anything from coming up and growing.
Geotextile comes in big rolls. Roll it out along the entirety of your road/driveway. You can cut sections out to account for elevation changes and curves. Then staple it down using long sturdy staples and hammer. This will keep the geotextile in place. You’ll want to make sure that you do a quality job of securing because the next step it putting rock down.
After the geotextile is secured, it’s time to put some rock down. I would recommend using one inch to 1 1/2” rock for a driveway. Yes the rock will settle and compact, but not like it would if you didn’t use the geotextile. The geotextile will keep the rock from sinking down into the soil, which will give you more bang for your buck.
What do you think of this method for creating driveways/roads? Let me know if the comments section below.
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